Essay On Equality In Ayn Rand's Anthem

The dystopian novel Anthem by Ayn Rand takes place in a totalitarian world of the future and focuses on the primitive society that Equality 7-2521 lives in. Equality is a street sweeper who portrays divergence between his intellectual desire and his society’s collective ideology. As his desires reach their peak, Equality embraces individualism and withdraws from his society, escaping to the Uncharted Forest, where he sets out to produce a new race of man defined by individualistic ego. Rand develops Equality into the connotation of her fundamental principle that, “One must never fail to pronounce a moral judgement” (“How Does One Lead a Rational Life in an Irrational Society?”) where Equality establishes this belief with the action of denouncing

His actions were befitting to the situation. Also, these actions correspond with Rand’s advice in “How Does One Lead a Rational Life in an Irrational Society?”. The society is a totalitarian dictatorship and Equality is the “humblest peasant or the lowest savage...rise in blind rebellion, were he to realize that he is being immolated, not to some incomprehensible “noble purpose,” but to plain, naked human evil” (Rand, “How Does One Lead a Rational Life in an Irrational Society?”). Equality follows through with Rand’s advice as a solution to his complications with his society. He knows that the acceptance of submission broke the structure of man and that his society is wrong to let the rights of man collapse under such a worship. Therefore, Equality sacrifices himself for the power of individuality. He takes the struggles of the martyr and rebels against the evil of the word “we”. Equality is correct to morally judge his society by pronouncing his denouncement of them in moral terms for they took away man’s freedom, shamed their people for their differences, and censored man’s power of